Selton Mello Movies
- 2009
This Portuguese-language comedy about a very unusual amour fou made headlines in its native country for outstripping the big-budget Terminator: Salvation at the Brazilian box office on its opening weekend. With a title that translates, literally, as "The Invisible Woman," the film concerns a deeply romantic young sad sack named Pedro (Selton Mello) whose life falls to pieces when his wife conceives a baby with a German millionaire and promptly leaves him. Distraught beyond the point of rationality, he falls hard for his sexy, football-obsessed neighbor, who caters to him by doing all of his cooking and cleaning and demonstrates peerless devotion to him. Pedro only has one small problem: the woman is imaginary. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Selton Mello
- 2008
Brazilian filmmaker Walter Lima Jr. looks back on the turmoil of the 1960's as well as the glories of the bossa nova boom in this musical period drama. Dico (Selton Mello) is a filmmaker who obsessively chronicles the career of his close friends in the group Os Desafinados, a bossa nova band who are on the verge of popular success at home and are earning a following among jazz fans abroad. Os Desafinados are the brainchild of composers Joaquim (Rodrigo Santoro) and Davi (Angelo Paes Leme), who with the help of their rhythm section Paolo Cesar (Andre Moraes) and Geraldo (Jair de Oliveira) are taking dance music into fresh and exiting directions. Their sound impresses Leon (David Herman), an American record producer who offers to bring the group to the United States and help them reach a new and wider audience. Joaquim and Davi eagerly accept the offer, and are jetted to New York City where they play a riotously well-received gig at jazz mecca the Village Vanguard. However, they soon discover Leon is more interested on how he can profit from the success of Os Desafinados than in the welfare of the group, and when Joaquim and Davi meet Gloria (Claudia Abreu), a gifted Brazilian vocalist who has relocated to Manhattan, the two become rivals for her romantic and musical attentions, an especially problematic situation for Joaquim since he's already married to Luiza (Alessandra Negrini). The band's career troubles and internal squabbles suddenly seem trivial, however, when Os Desafinados learn that Brazil's political future is up in the air following a violent military coup. Os Desafinados (aka Out Of Tune) received its North American premiere at the 2008 Guadalajara Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Rodrigo Santoro, Cláudia Abreu, (more)
- 2006
A noxious stench and a perfect derriere send the mind of a perverse pawn shop proprietor spinning into insanity in a darkly humorous tale of mental malaise from director Heitor Dhalia. Lourenço takes perverse pleasure in profiting from the misfortune of his fellow man. A pawn shop owner who relishes in the power that he holds over the desperate visitors to his modest store, Lourenço becomes fixated on a smell that seems to be coming from the bathroom drain and proves virtually impossible to eradicate. Another of Lourenço's strange obsessions is the behind of a waitress who works in a nearby restaurant. Though he hates the food she serves and can't even remember her name as hard as he tries, Lourenço's fixation on the waitress' shapely buttocks proves as difficult to shake as the repulsive smell which seems to have worked it's way into his very pores. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Selton Mello, Paula Braun, (more)
- 2001
This fanciful fantasy from Brazil (which was adapted from a play that previously inspired a top-rated Brazilian TV series) follows two poor but resourceful young men, Jack the Cricket (Matheus Nachtergaele) and Chico (Selton Mello), on their adventures. Looking for work, Jack and Chico get a job at a bakery, where the mean-spirited owner feeds them food so awful that when they give it to a dog, it kills the poor animal, leading the boys to fast-talk a priest into giving the dog a funeral mass. Later on down the road, shy Chico falls in love with beautiful Rosinha, whose father is the town's wealthiest citizen. While Chico is too timid to approach her, Jack is able to fool Rosinha's boyfriends into leaving town, leaving the field open for his friend. And finally, a gang of ruthless criminals invades the town and goes on a murder spree, with Jack gunned down alongside many of the town's most prominent citizens. As Chico buries his friend, Jack matches wits in the next world with the Devil (Luis Melo), persuading the Virgin Mary (Fernanda Montenegro) to put in a good word for himself and his friends to Jesus. O Auto Da Compadecida proved to be a box-office sensation in Brazil, where it has become the nation's top-grossing homegrown feature. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Matheus Nachtergaele, Selton Mello, (more)
One young man's forbidden love threatens to destroy his life and tear his family apart in this epic-length period drama from Brazil. In the early '40s, teenaged Andre (Selton Mello) is being raised in a strict and deeply religious home, where his father (Raul Cortez) is known to grill his children about his spiritual failings over the dinner table. However, Andre is being torn apart inside by his uncontrollable lust for his sister Ana (Simone Spoladore); a beautiful young woman, Ana unknowingly excited her brother's desires while dancing uninhibitedly at a community gathering, and now he's wracked with longing for her. Unable to remain at home with Ana, Andre runs away to live with his secret shame, only to be brought back into the family fold by his older brother, Pedro (Leonardo Medeiros). Andre confesses his unnatural desire to Pedro, but he finds that confession does little to ease his passion, and while Ana remains unaware of her brother's feelings for her, she is also being consumed with desires she cannot freely express until she once again performs a lust-addled dance at neighborhood festival. Adapted from a novel by Raduan Nassar, Lavoura Arcaica was written, directed, and edited by Luiz Fernando Carvalho; it was his first theatrical feature after a celebrated career in Brazilian television. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Selton Mello, Raul Cortez, (more)
Bruno Barreto returned to his native Brazil after a ten-year absence to direct this fact-based political thriller that was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Pedro Cardoso stars as Rio de Janeiro journalist Fernando Gabeira, who decides with his friend Cesar (Selton Mello) to take up arms with a radical leftist organization, MR-8, in 1969. The revolutionaries, who include the tough-talking and beautiful Maria (Fernanda Torres), are fighting to overthrow Brazil's brutal military government through civil unrest and guerilla tactics. Their first action, the robbery of a bank, is successful, although one group member is captured and tortured by Henrique (Marco Ricca), a secret service agent plagued by his conscience. As a follow-up to the heist, the MR-8 members kidnap the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick (Alan Arkin). During four days of captivity, however, the kidnappers discover that their prisoner is a good-hearted man of conscience, causing Fernando to become increasingly uneasy about the group's plan to kill Elbrick if a demand for the release of political prisoners goes unheeded. O Que E Isso, Companheiro? (1997) was based on Gabeira's book of the same name but was released in the U.S. under the title Four Days in September. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin
